Local Search Pros - How do you Prove your Worth to Clients?

I am curious to know how my fellow local search professionals respond to this question (and its variations) from clients: "What am I getting for my money?" For the clients who are too busy (or unwilling) to talk to us regularly, and then come out of the woodwork to ask us "What are you doing for me?"

When clients ask for reports, what do you tend to include? Perhaps just as important, what do you tend to leave out? Because there are so many minor tweaks and "little things" that go into a well-rounded SEO program, reporting them all would either be an overwhelming waste of time, or it could appear to the client that we are just trying to drown them with data and dodge the question.

I am sure we have all wrestled with the task of reporting tangible production or improvement to a client (or boss) on a continual basis.

We have tinkered with several different kinds of templates and reports over the years, some of them mostly or fully automated, including graphs and spreadsheets, bullets, pie charts, etc. and we have never found anything worth implementing for all our recurring clients. The search continues...﻿

Re: Local Search Pros - How do you Prove your Worth to Clients?

Thanks Linda. Yes, Jeff and I started talking about client reports yesterday and how to best share metrics and monthly deliverables. It can be daunting to explain every little thing we do (which we don't). We just need to arrange each report to fit the needs of that particular client. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Local Search Pros - How do you Prove your Worth to Clients?

I tend to quantify the results quarterly for clients, and I get to tell em "Im sorry, I dont know what traffic we get from our Bing listing, but I can estimate..."

Some clients want information (views/leads) every month. And I have to meet with them and explain, good or bad, before they pull out that ledger/checkbook. For that client, after three months, he loves to write me the check. But those first three months, he was considering closing down, bulldozing the building, and selling the lot. (According to his financials, that would have been the best choice. But then I happened and now they are expanding their building, growing the brand and sales, building a second location.) So monthly, he is happy to write me that check. =D

Re: Local Search Pros - How do you Prove your Worth to Clients?

Lets face facts
Our local clients just want leads( conversions to us)
I make it a rule of thumbs to ensure that I have good conversion tracking set up.
I personal set up goals for visits to a contact page and then one for completing the contact form, that way I can see how many users visited the contact page and how many did not complete the form.
That way I have half a chance at explaining why they are not getting contact forms completed.
some times the contact forms are just to long, and just does not make a good UX ( user experience)
as well as incorporating monthly reports with data from GWT, Maps Data as well as rankings and analytic s data
Thats my 2p's with we say here in the uk